All posts tagged "app"

Monday, January 17, 2011

"Anyone using a computer is likely to use some form of address book and if you're on a Mac, it's likely to be Apple's Address Book application. Initially it contains nicely organized contacts but after years of use it becomes filled with duplicates, messed up fields or duplicated details within the contact itself."

My address book is in dire need of something like this. It's available in the App Store for $4.99 USD, and has gotten good reviews. There are some quirks according to the review, namely thinking duplicates are there when they have already been fixed at times, but this is fixed by restarting the program. Worth a look if you need some help cleaning out your address book.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

"Visa has announced that its official iPhone application is available for free in the iTunes App Store. It's completely in step with other popular consumer apps, as it's heavy on deals and location-based technology."

This app, available now in iTunes [link], allows you to customize it so you get offers that only interest you. It also gives you a map where you can redeem the offers. If you have a Visa Signature card, you get even more offers. It appears there are only 50 or so merchants signed up for this service at this time though, and you can find out more at the Visa mobile site.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

"With the quality of cellphone cameras approximating that of yesterday's point-and-shoots, you can take some amazing photographs on your iPhone. It gets even better with the right apps apps. Here are our favorite photography apps for your iPhone."

I like the stuff LifeHacker comes up with, and this article about photography apps for your iPhone is no different. I'm not nearly into photography the way I should be with all that goes on in my family, so this was interesting reading, finding out about the numerous apps out there for the iPhone. What is your favorite photography app?

The app is called GV Connect and is available in iTunes for $2.99 USD [affiliate link]. From the brief description in iTunes, it appears this might be a handy app if you use Google Voice. I have a Google Voice account but haven't really used it all that much, how about you? Anyone out there using Google Voice on a regular basis and find this interesting?

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

"US President Barack Obama famously used an iPhone app and several social media tools in his successful campaign for the White House. Now, the US government has released more mobile apps."

I'm glad they are adopting the app method to get the information out from TSA, Product Recalls, FBI's Most Wanted and Find Your Embassy, as well as other areas of the government. Some are just linking you to the page but they are optimized for your iPhone. You can go direct to the app page [link] and find out what is available.

Friday, July 2, 2010

"One of the best parts about traveling is sharing your experiences with friends and family back home."

One way to document all your adventures is to create your own blog, or go to a site like everlater where they help you create one. Or any number of apps and web-based tools. If you get lost in the choices, have a look at this article where they narrow it down to a few of what they consider some of the best travel tools. After all, it is travel season yes?

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

"Long before Apple even announced its new iPad, media companies were going nuts about the device, for two reasons. First, they believed they would be able to create apps that would be gorgeous and stunning and way better than anything they've been able to do on a Web browser. Second, money."

Image Credit: Macblogz

Of course the rub, according to this author, is that they have to work with Apple, and that Apple doesn't exactly play nice with others that don't follow along with their vision (think Flash and Adobe). Don't play by our rules and we really don't want to deal with you. His article is meant to serve as a warning to those that want to "play in Apple's garden" and he advises, DON'T DO IT! A recent article at the Mobile Opportunity blog takes a different tact, that it is only about the money, but that Adobe and Apple are both to blame and the customer is the "innocent victim" in all of this. Personally, I don't Apple is a "bully" and I certainly don't think the customer is an innocent victim, however I do agree it is about money.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is still beating Apple when it comes to smartphone market share, but when it comes to mobile app downloads, Apple is crushing RIM."

RIM today said their BlackBerry App World has 20 million registered users that are downloading approximately 1 million apps daily. They did the math after this announcement and figured out, based on the January total of 3 billion apps from Apple that the App Store users are downloading between 10 and 20 million apps a day. That is a wide range and as the pioneer in this app store business it makes sense that they would be king of the downloads. The point they are trying to make is that even though RIM is the leader in market share, the app store advantage that Apple has is the key to long-term growth. What are your thoughts?

Monday, April 26, 2010

"Instapaper Pro has just been updated and now features a nice reading interface suited well for the big screen of the iPad. In case you haven't used Instapaper before, either on the iPhone/iPod touch or even web interface, it's a pretty useful app that lets you save web pages that you are browsing so that you can read it later, even when you are offline."

Some of the new features are brightness control, reading screen has controls moved to the top, increased size of inline images and fixed login Internet connection issues. You can find out more at the Instapaper Blog, or check it out in iTunes (universal app for iPhone and iPad).

Monday, April 19, 2010

"ABC has released initial statistics on the performance of their iPad app, and the results are promising. The ABC Player has been downloaded 205,000 times since it's release just ten days ago, and the app has delivered 650,000 television episodes during that time."

That is a large number of episodes, and I'm in that tally having watched an episode of Lost just to see how well the app worked. This is a well done app so I'm hoping that more channels will come out with their own apps based on this success.

Friday, April 2, 2010

"A week after its app submission deadline, Apple has apparently pushed through 1350 apps. Appadvice lists the apps that have been approved by Apple for the iPad, and presumably all or most should be to install this weekend."

AppAdvice has a good walkthrough of the iPad App Store on their site, which should give a good idea of which apps you want to add on Saturday when you pick up your iPad. Not sure how many I'm going to add, as I've said before I am primarily getting mine to use as a book reader and web browser, but who knows, something there may catch my eye.

"We poked around the iTunes App Store for the coolest and most unique iPad apps and came up with a list of some of the apps we'll be trading in our weekly Starbucks allowance to purchase. In no particular order, below is a small sampling of what we liked."

My favorite of the lot? The Weather HD App (pictured above). For $0.99 USD [link] it certainly looks good, and will work perfectly if you want to use it as a digital picture frame. And since the iPad, at least according to what I've read, doesn't have a weather app this is a good replacement.

One app that isn't on here that should be is Star Walk, available now for iPad for $4.99 USD, only two bucks more than the iPhone version. And TUAW has come out with their list of 20 apps, and it does include Star Walk. You can find their article here.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

"As the April 3 launch of the iPad approaches, market researcher ComScore has found that consumers expect to use Apple's tablet mainly for surfing the Web and checking e-mail--not for rushing the App Store."

They survey by ComScore asked 2,176 users and found that only 26% of the future iPad owners would use it to access and download applications, while 36% were unlikely to do this. Most are planning to do what I intend to do, that is surf the net, read books, use email and watch movies. You can see the survey here.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

"From time to time I come across an iPhone app I think would make a great gift for a friend or family member (in this case, my mom, since she has an iPod Touch and everyone else in my family is either Apple-phobic or a Luddite). Problem is, it just seems too authoritarian to send them a $5 iTunes Store gift card with stipulations on how to spend it."

This is indeed a welcome change to the iTunes Store, one that will come in handy for me. How about you, think you will be using this new feature?

"Opera Software has submitted the iPhone version of its Mini browser to Apple for App Store approval, Opera said on Tuesday. That browser version was first shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and Opera has since worked hard at getting the product as much attention as possible."

In the past, apps have been rejected for duplicating functionality (which this would do) as well as for those not using webkit. But Tor Odland, Head of Communications at Opera thinks that it will be approved because "of the improved speed it offers compared to Safari and the fact that is already has 50 million users." I think he is kidding himself, why would Apple care if you had 50 million users? It certainly won't mean they will all become iPhone owners if they approve it. Matthew Miller over at ZDNet has some thoughts as to why Apple won't approve it, what are your thoughts?

Monday, March 22, 2010

"Silicon Alley Insider has posted an interesting chart that shows the total number of apps available across various mobile platforms. As you can see from the chart, Apple's iPhone leads the pack by a longshot with 170,000 apps according to AppShopper.com."

I don't think anyone is too surprised by this, at least I wasn't, since Apple created the market and their App Store is the roadmap for this. I thought it was an interesting comparison.

Friday, January 15, 2010

The Claim:"Scanner Pro transforms iPhone into portable scanner in your pocket. It lets you scan multipage documents, send them by email and even upload to MobileMe iDisk or any other WebDAV enabled server. You can also transfer scanned document to desktop computer over Wi-Fi and transform it into editable MS Word file with OCR tool of your choice. Scanner Pro easily handles situations when you have printed document that should be send by email and there is no scanner nearby. The application incorporates special algorithms that enhance image quality to make it as readable as possible."

The App: Readdle has come out with an application that they claim turns your iPhone into a portable scanner. But can it really compare to a scanner in quality? We shall see!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

"A group of developers plans to launchhas launched FreeAppaDay.com, a Website that will offer paid iPhone programs for free for 24 hours. The program, which kicks off next week, results from the efforts of developer ICS Mobile; OpenFeint, the leading iDevice social gaming network; Tapjoy, a mobile advertising and promotion firm; and Blacksmith Games."

I checked out the site at FreeAppaDay and they appear to have started the program already. For 24 hours, they will offer an iPhone/iPod Touch app for free for 24 hours. Every 24 hours the app changes so you get exposed to a variety of different gaming apps in different genres.

Friday, August 21, 2009

"Discovery Communications has released an official Discovery Channel app in the App Store today."

This follows several other channel apps that do provide some good information on the fly. With the Discover App, which was actually released two days ago, you can get schedules, video clips, links to purchase episodes from the variety of shows they air as well as access to photo galleries. The free app is available now in the iTunes store.

Monday, July 13, 2009

"Run for cover as the original award-winning turn-based strategy game WORMS hits the App Store! With a selection of single-player battles, up to 4 player multiplayer mode, and plenty of ways to customise your team, Worms is high on entertainment and replay value!"

Worms was always one of those games that looked interesting but at the same time looked like it might be somewhat over my head. Of course, with the $4.99 price tag in the app store, it may just be worth a look, and knowing me, I'll end up addicted to it like I am to Peggle...